The dirty little secret that almost no one in Washington is willing to discuss is the rampant fraud that is embedded in the entitlement system. Democrats, led by Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, never discuss the high percentage of fraudulent payments in entitlement programs. Instead, they continue the mantra that entitlement spending must be preserved even in the face of exploding national debt, and regardless of disturbing signs of rampant fraud. Increasingly, we hear jaw dropping stories of abuse and fraud that should force our leaders in Washington to put the issue of fraud and abuse within the entitlement system formally on the table. Just last week we learned of the case of the “Adult Baby” , the 30-year old guy, that lives in a diaper, is fed by bottle and thus somehow entitled to taxpayer-supplied, social security disability for his condition. Strangely, this is the very entitlement system that Obama and Democrats not only insist that we preserve, but are anxious to expand. The case of the “adult baby” is a sad indicator of just how much fraud is already embedded into our rich entitlement system and how easy it has become for hucksters and fakes to gain access to taxpayer provided benefits. Currently, there are almost 2,000 federal subsidy / entitlement programs, and we know from GAO reports and from anecdotal reporting that fraud is rampant. Despite two decades of topping government lists (GAO) for waste, fraud and abuse, Medicare, Medicaid, housing assistance, Food Stamps (SNAP) and several other entitlement programs continue to expand even as reports of fraud plague the system.

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Let us not forget the 500+ Federal Agencies that suck up billions if not trillions of dollars each year as well. I worked on the Vaccines for Children Program under the CDC under the HHS which wasted money as if it were their job.

Low and behold, it is their job. Oddly enough you used the term ‘buckets of money’ and that is the same term each program in each Department uses for their yearly allocated funds. They have to ‘empty’ their buckets before they can get it expanded and refilled. They borrow from other buckets, they combine buckets, and they even have buckets for ‘pretend’ programs with no users or stakeholders so they can use those as backup buckets.

We must remember that there are 10 of thousands of programs that have yearly buckets worth $millions each. While I was at the CDC it was COMMON knowledge that less than 30% of the projects would ever actually be implemented and used to some capacity. Working with various contractors from the Army, Navy, Treasury, etc this turned out to be COMMON across Gov’t.

So 70% of our Gov’t Agency money is flat out wasted and the other 30% is just terribly mismanaged.

In my country, there isn’t even a word like “spending”, most of “budget” starts and ends with “allocation” and this is a common knowledge here as to what happens to the “Allocation”, as succinctly described by ‘End is Far’. Yet people think more government programs are the solution and ‘only if politicians were good’. Whatever has happened in our own country and elsewhere, they do not seem to connect the dots. Other Asian countries which were far behind in manufacture, industries and infrastructure 50 years ago are way ahead. Yet politicians and intelligentsia attribute the failure to everything else but their policies.

About democrats and tax hikes, why not let it happen and then by 2012 people will realize what a dampener those have been and then vote for the right party.

Of course it’s absurd to expect that government will ever eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse. It’s one of the primary roles of government! What do you think would happen if people were ever allowed to keep their own money? They would inevitably discover that the vast majority of “services” provided by government are completely unnecessary. They could never allow this to happen. They MUST waste your money. If governments didn’t waste money, they would shrink — drastically. For as long as there is government, they will continue to FEDex empty packages to themselves (as per the Obama commercial, and now you know why, even though he told you not to ask.)

[…] when government is giving away other people’s money, there are those who will try to abuse the program. That’s true for corporate welfare, and it’s true for traditional welfare like food stamps. […]